Viva Mexico - El Primero Dia
My Mexican adventure started just as my last business viaje. With me feeling completely stressed the fuck out and not wanting to go... I felt a little better after watching a show I DVRed off LOGO called Round Trip Ticket where el destino was mexico city. This acutally made me kinda excited, minus the whole working part of my trip. Still, being stressed and knowing i had to wake up and do shit at 5am, i got no sleep. Maybe an hour or two, with wake ups in b/w...
I made it out of my death trap of a parking spot OK, which was a kind relief. Made it to la aeropuerta en perfect time. Saw one of my other fellow Red Prairie employees going off to god knows where, but he seemed to know i was going to mexico and wished me a safe flight. then i saw johnny trabajo getting on board my flight to Atlanta. another RP employee, what a coincidence...
Flying was fine... i'm actually getting used to the whole flying sucks thing. you just have to put up with it, and in the long run, when you're flying to el cuidad de mexcio, it's pretty much worth it.
Oh, to add to the stress factor, i had no idea where i was going once i got to mexico. I had been told the company i was visiting on-site in mexico was taking care of my ground transportation/hotel, yet i hadn't heard from anyone come monday morning. when it came time to fill out forms for customs, i had nothing to write down for where i was staying or what the company's address was o nada. good thing mexico didn't give a shit.
At customs, i saw johnny trabajo waiting in line... somehow we had managed to evade each other until then, despite being one the same two flights from milwaukee to atlanta, then to mexico city. that was nice, cuz when i got past customs, i talked to him about how i had no idea what i was doing, i got a phone number from a girl at RP, and johnny trabajo called it and talked to them in spanish. that was helpful. all of this though was just to determine that the guy who was picking me up was standing about 5 ft away w/ a really shitty sign (red marker on lose leaf paper) that said "Andrew Pensleky Red Prairie"... i wish i was more observant...
the kid who picked me up (se llama Esau - which is pronounced, as johnny trabajo puts it, like a wolf's howl... E-sa-ooooooooooowwwll) was really cool. He's about my age, has essentially my same job, and spoke decent english. We talked about work, mexico city, milwaukee, what have you... that was a fun drive cuz i got to see how fuckin crazy people are in mexico city when it comes to driving. a lot of the time there isn't any defined lanes, and when people merge, it's more "get the hell out of my way punta" than our "you should check your blind spot" attitude we have in the states. It's a strange mesh of super aggresive driving with an obivous need to be defensive (ie, not hit other cars, even if they are "gallos masivos")
Anyway, once i got there, i got to work for 3 hours (yay) altho i didn't get much done. All the software engineers at this company are my age, so we were mostly just talking about shit en lieu of any actual work.
One of the guys drove us to our hotel (a sheraton in downtown mexico city, very very nice). I checked in and this bellhop runs over, asks me if i have any other luggage, and the other guy i'm with from Wisconsin who is on-site, Nick, says "yeah... where is your luggage?" then i taught the mexicans how to say the word fuck. I left my luggage in Esau's car. But Esau is awesome and figured this out himself, and drove out of his way to drop it off at our hotel.
Oh, also, about the bellhop... He followed me into my room and showed me how to use everything, like just because i don't speak spanish doesn't mean i haven't used a light switch before... He also insisted that i must "hate mexicans" three seperate, convincing, and awkward times, to which each time i looked at him like he was fuckin crazy, and he finally acknowledged that he was, in fact, joking. I'm inclined to give him some leeway, what given the possibility for cultural misunderstandings and all... but i'm also inclined to think he's kind of a fuckin douche.
I had dinner with Nick, Johnny Trabajo and two other Red Prairie employees who are in mexico city working on another client. That was semi-enjoyable -- everything was great except for the 30 minute conversion we had about hunting/guns/killing mass amounts of things. For that part i pretty much just sat there and pretened that killing things was cool.
Speaking of killing things, the food was OK, but not amazing. i had an awesome tortilla soup and chicken mole, which had a fancier name, but it was just fuckin chicken mole.. anyway, there's still time to be amazed...
I took some blurry pictures (i stole la camara de mi padre para el viaje -- haven't really figured out its various settings yet...)
México!
The ginormous median by my hotel
View from my room
hasta una otra dia...
Andrés
I made it out of my death trap of a parking spot OK, which was a kind relief. Made it to la aeropuerta en perfect time. Saw one of my other fellow Red Prairie employees going off to god knows where, but he seemed to know i was going to mexico and wished me a safe flight. then i saw johnny trabajo getting on board my flight to Atlanta. another RP employee, what a coincidence...
Flying was fine... i'm actually getting used to the whole flying sucks thing. you just have to put up with it, and in the long run, when you're flying to el cuidad de mexcio, it's pretty much worth it.
Oh, to add to the stress factor, i had no idea where i was going once i got to mexico. I had been told the company i was visiting on-site in mexico was taking care of my ground transportation/hotel, yet i hadn't heard from anyone come monday morning. when it came time to fill out forms for customs, i had nothing to write down for where i was staying or what the company's address was o nada. good thing mexico didn't give a shit.
At customs, i saw johnny trabajo waiting in line... somehow we had managed to evade each other until then, despite being one the same two flights from milwaukee to atlanta, then to mexico city. that was nice, cuz when i got past customs, i talked to him about how i had no idea what i was doing, i got a phone number from a girl at RP, and johnny trabajo called it and talked to them in spanish. that was helpful. all of this though was just to determine that the guy who was picking me up was standing about 5 ft away w/ a really shitty sign (red marker on lose leaf paper) that said "Andrew Pensleky Red Prairie"... i wish i was more observant...
the kid who picked me up (se llama Esau - which is pronounced, as johnny trabajo puts it, like a wolf's howl... E-sa-ooooooooooowwwll) was really cool. He's about my age, has essentially my same job, and spoke decent english. We talked about work, mexico city, milwaukee, what have you... that was a fun drive cuz i got to see how fuckin crazy people are in mexico city when it comes to driving. a lot of the time there isn't any defined lanes, and when people merge, it's more "get the hell out of my way punta" than our "you should check your blind spot" attitude we have in the states. It's a strange mesh of super aggresive driving with an obivous need to be defensive (ie, not hit other cars, even if they are "gallos masivos")
Anyway, once i got there, i got to work for 3 hours (yay) altho i didn't get much done. All the software engineers at this company are my age, so we were mostly just talking about shit en lieu of any actual work.
One of the guys drove us to our hotel (a sheraton in downtown mexico city, very very nice). I checked in and this bellhop runs over, asks me if i have any other luggage, and the other guy i'm with from Wisconsin who is on-site, Nick, says "yeah... where is your luggage?" then i taught the mexicans how to say the word fuck. I left my luggage in Esau's car. But Esau is awesome and figured this out himself, and drove out of his way to drop it off at our hotel.
Oh, also, about the bellhop... He followed me into my room and showed me how to use everything, like just because i don't speak spanish doesn't mean i haven't used a light switch before... He also insisted that i must "hate mexicans" three seperate, convincing, and awkward times, to which each time i looked at him like he was fuckin crazy, and he finally acknowledged that he was, in fact, joking. I'm inclined to give him some leeway, what given the possibility for cultural misunderstandings and all... but i'm also inclined to think he's kind of a fuckin douche.
I had dinner with Nick, Johnny Trabajo and two other Red Prairie employees who are in mexico city working on another client. That was semi-enjoyable -- everything was great except for the 30 minute conversion we had about hunting/guns/killing mass amounts of things. For that part i pretty much just sat there and pretened that killing things was cool.
Speaking of killing things, the food was OK, but not amazing. i had an awesome tortilla soup and chicken mole, which had a fancier name, but it was just fuckin chicken mole.. anyway, there's still time to be amazed...
I took some blurry pictures (i stole la camara de mi padre para el viaje -- haven't really figured out its various settings yet...)
México!
The ginormous median by my hotel
View from my room
hasta una otra dia...
Andrés